Of Roof Space, Indoor Rain, and Shouting Palm Trees

At the beginning of my non-lucid dream, I am with an unfamiliar woman (of perhaps twenty) in a fictitious room of the Barolin Street house that is implied to be between the main bedroom and the lounge room. There is no furniture in the room. Despite my lack of viable dream state awareness, I am subliminally aware that I am dreaming.

My dream self believes that we are awake but that I am ritually inducing the dream state. We are lying on the wooden floor. I am aware of Zsuzsanna being nearby, yet I also do not see the unfamiliar woman as an imposter or trespasser. (This is because she is supposed to be the usual Naiad and melatonin mediator, modeled after a young Zsuzsanna, but because I am not viably lucid, the situation is distorted and integrated with other dreaming processes.) I am teaching her how to enter the dream state by creating the illusion of water as autosymbolic of natural melatonin and as defining illusory physicality within sleep. I cause the floor to transform into shallow water (the typical beginning of dream state entry since early childhood), and we float around for a short time even though it only seems about four inches deep. There is an awareness that I am entering the dream state (even though I am already dreaming). I consider that if the water becomes very deep as we go farther into the dream state, sharks might eventually appear below us, but there is no continuity of perceived threat.

From here, I enter a more vivid dream segment. There are no thoughts about the unfamiliar woman, who has vanished, or of the previous exercise. Zsuzsanna and our two youngest children are present. There is no longer any association with dream entry or being in the dream state. There is a storm approaching from the south. I look out from the lounge room and see odd clouds, one of them shaped like a top. Despite the several big fluffy clouds being white, they supposedly are storm clouds. I try to create a tornado from the one that looks like a top. Soon, there is a loud crash, and something, perhaps a large tree branch (though I do not see it) comes through the roof above the hallway, leaving an irregular hole. Rain comes in. Zsuzsanna and I look at the damage. I deliberately stand under the rain coming through the ceiling. I feel cool and refreshed, and my dream becomes much more vivid. (I have used water to vivify and sustain my dreams since early childhood.)

In the next scene, I walk around observing water flowing down the walls from the edges of the ceiling. There is a plastic storage box on a high shelf that I feel concern about getting wet, as it may contain textbooks or my dream journals. However, it does not seem that the water is anywhere but on the walls. Through the windows, I look at the cluster of white clouds again and notice more that are shaped like tops, though I try to imagine more than there are.

Zsuzsanna and our two youngest children look outside and up from (fictitious) lounge room windows at the south end of the room. It seems to be nighttime now. Near our house are two tall palm trees (not a real-life feature). The palm trees start to move in the wind and soon bow down near the windows and, at first, “roar” at us. Loud human voices, somewhat electronic, come from atop them. I find it curious but not unusual.

Upon going outside, I see that Isaiah Washington (from “The 100”) is inside a space (as if I am viewing the imagery with x-ray vision) in the fetal position near the bottom of one of the palm trees. He is speaking into a microphone. He loudly and cheerfully states, “This is sector seven.” It seems that another male (though I do not see him) is inside the other palm tree. The loud voices are coming from loudspeakers atop the palm trees.

The neurological function of the preconscious simulacrum (Isaiah Washington in this case) is to guide the dream self back into wakefulness (which is known as RAS or reticular activating system mediation or modulation depending on the mode of the dream self) - and enigmatic space typically results in an avatar with authority (fictitious or not) as in this case. The fetal position implies being “reborn” into waking life. The bowing palm trees are the association with a form of vestibular system correlation, the emerging awareness (vestibular precursor) of the return to viable physicality upon waking (as the dream self does not correctly discern the physical body until RAS and the vestibular system kicks in, which often results in flying or falling, bicycle riding, using stairs, and so on). It follows the usual autosymbolism-driven formats, in the same order, that my dreams have for over fifty years, though the processes are always unique and intriguing in their rendering.